Yesterday in Sports 06 20 26

Hey, I'm Chris Horvidell and this is Yesterday in Sports. The show that gets you caught up on the biggest things that happened yesterday, why they mattered, and what you need to know before pretending you watched every second of it. Here we go. Hey, I'm Chris Horvidell and this is Yesterday in Sports. What happened yesterday and why it matters. We start with the World Cup, where the United States beat Australia 2-0 in Seattle and officially booked a spot into the round of 32 with a group game still left to play. No Christian Pulisic, no problem, the US handled business. Flo Balogun forced an early Cambridge's own goal in the 11th minute and Alex Freeman added a second before halftime after VAR overturned an offsides call. The big thing here is not just the win, it's that the US is through after two matches for the first time in the modern World Cup era. That matters. This team now gets to manage the final group match versus Turkey instead of treating it like a four-alarm must-win fire. Elsewhere in the World Cup, Brazil looked a lot more like Brazil. After opening with a 1-1 draw against Morocco, they beat Haiti 3-0 in Philadelphia behind two goals from Matias Cunha and another goal from Vinny Junior. That eliminated Haiti, which is tough, but their return to the World Cup for the first time since 1974 was still a great story. Brazil meanwhile needed this. You can't be Brazil and spend an entire week with everybody asking, hey are you guys boring now? That's not allowed. Morocco also beat Scotland 1-0 with Ismail Saibari scoring just 71 seconds in. Scotland did push late and they had a real penalty shout, but Morocco held on. So Group C is suddenly spicy. Brazil and Morocco are in control and now Scotland has Brazil in their next match. It's not exactly the reward you want for a frustrating loss. In hockey, Jonathan Toews officially announced his retirement at 38. This is one of those careers where the resume just feels heavy. Three Stanley Cups with the Blackhawks, Con Smythe award winner in 2010, Selke winner, two Olympic gold medals with Canada, youngest player to ever join the triple gold club. He finished with 912 regular season points and a reputation as one of the defining leaders of that Chicago dynasty. It's also a reminder that those Blackhawk teams are fully history now. That era had Toews, Patrick Kane, Duncan Keith, Marian Hosep. It was a machine. And Toews was the captain, the tone setter, the guy who made the whole thing feel serious. Hockey loses one of its great grown ups, which is rare in a sport where everyone is one bad shift away from trying to fight somebody. Still in hockey, North Carolina is officially in celebration mode. Governor Josh Stein proclaimed this Stanley Cup summer after the Carolina Hurricanes won the cup and Raleigh gets the championship parade today. The Canes are celebrating their second Stanley Cup 20 years after the first in 2006 and that connection is pretty perfect because Rod Brindamore was the captain then and the coach now. It's the kind of full circle sports thing that sounds fake until you remember that the man known as Rod the Bod has been powered by black coffee, bench presses, and spite for about three decades. For North Carolina, this is huge. The Canes aren't just a good hockey story anymore, they're a proof of concept for a state that is an absolute hockey market when the team gives people something real to believe in. In the WNBA, the Washington Mystics pulled off a really nice road upset beating the New York Liberty 86-83 and snapping New York's 8-game winning streak. Kiki Ariafin had 20 points including the go-ahead bucket late and Sonia Citron added 16 and 8 assists. The Liberty had chances but Washington closed better and that is the story. For the Mystics, it's a credibility win. For the Liberty, it's one of those games where you don't panic but you definitely rewatch the last two minutes and do your best to never do that again. In baseball, the wildest game of the night came in Sacramento which still doesn't sound right where the A's beat the Angels 12-11 in 10 innings. The A's lead then gave up 11 straight runs, then somehow came back from 7 down. Jonah Heim hit a pinch hit homer with two outs in the 9th to tie it and the Athletics finished it in extras. This was not a normal baseball game, that's a game where both bullpens should be asked to fill out a wellness questionnaire. But for the A's, it's a ridiculous comeback. And for the Angels, it's the kind of loss that follows you around for days. In football, keep an eye on Brendan Soresby as he's decided to gamble and enter the NFL Supplemental Draft. Ba-dum-bum. Soresby is a talented quarterback but he's entering the league through a messy and unusual path after his college career was derailed by gambling-related issues. The football part is real. Size, arm talent, mobility, enough tools the teams are going to talk themselves into the upside and the risk is real too. That's why it's interesting. The risk, boy, is as significant as you can imagine. This supplemental draft is weird because teams bid future picks so if a team uses a second rounder on them, they'll lose that pick in next year's draft. It becomes a high-stakes poker table and in a league where everybody's desperate for quarterback answers, somebody may decide the risk is worth it. And finally, let's end with a fun story. The X Games are launching the X Games League, a team-based action sports league built around skateboarding, BMX, skiing, snowboarding, city clubs, and a season-long championship format. This is legitimately cool. Action sports have always been around individual stars and big events but this gives athletes teams, rivalries, and more structure. The summer version kicks off at X Games Sacramento from June 26th through the 28th with top skaters and BMX riders competing for points. And honestly, I love the idea of action sports getting a league format. Give me standings. Give me rivals. Give me Tokyo vs. New York skateboarding beef that somehow ends with an 11-year-old doing something on a halfpipe that would send me directly to urgent care. And for today's Rumor Watch, LeBron James is still the biggest NBA domino sitting out there. The latest reporting says the prevailing feeling around the league is that LeBron is likely to return to the Lakers if he plays next season, but the Warriors are still viewed as a realistic second option if that door opens. And this is where it gets fun because Golden State reportedly could clear room for the full mid-level exception around $15.1 million and theoretically give LeBron one last run with Steph Curry. Now, is that likely? No. Probably not. LeBron is a smart guy and turning down a max contract to go live in San Francisco and play with Steph Curry for a season isn't the right financial move. But the fact that the LeBron-Warriors thing is a real sentence in 2026 is ridiculous in the best way possible. It's not out of the realm of possibility. It's just really unlikely. If LeBron stays with the Lakers, and you know, he probably will. He's not going to turn down that extra $40 million in what could be his last season. It is about trying to make one more run with Luka. If he somehow ends up with the Warriors, it's a basketball history fever dream. Steph, LeBron, Dre Mob, one last title chase. Maybe they put all the chips in the middle of the table, dangle that first round pick and go get somebody else to play with them. It sounds like somebody accidentally simmed 2K with trade override turned off. It would be fun. We'll see what happens. But that's it for today. The US is through with the World Cup, Brazil woke up, Morocco is dangerous, Jonathan Toews walks away a legend, and the Canes are ready to party. The Mystics still won in Brooklyn, the A's won a baseball game that made no sense, Brendan Soresby is going to turn this supplemental draft into actual NFL theater, and the X Games are trying something new. I'm Chris Horvidell, and that's it for today's show about what happened yesterday. We'll see you tomorrow.